I Felt Hope
by ZoFran
Summary: The love story of Alice and Jasper. From their meeting in a half empty diner to their joining with the Cullens,
1. Chapter 1 Alice's POV

**I felt Hope**

**By ZoFran**

I woke alone.

I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at a canopy of leaves, with the light of dawn shining through them.

For a time I lay motionless on my back, mesmerised.

I could see everything, hear everything, smell everything.

Wet forest earth, dry bark, a wind gently blowing making the forest shiver and sigh. Every sense was attuned to these things and so much more.

It all seemed so unfamiliar, being able to see a ladybug walk along a leaf which grew from the top of the tallest tree.

But when I tried to remember what I felt before there was nothing.

My mind was an empty hole of darkness.

I tried to remember family, friends, anything! The colour of my hair, the sound of my voice.

Everything I ever was, was gone.

My name?

That I searched for the most, but like everything else it eluded me.

/

After a time I sat up and looked around. Trees were the only thing I saw but I could hear activity far off to my right. The faint sound of automobiles, and swift footsteps on a hard ground.

I looked down at my legs lying in front of me. They were bared from the knee where the peculiar white sack-like dress I wore ended. My calves seemed very skinny and very, very white. Was that natural? It didn't seem like it, but I couldn't recall anything different.

Long straight black hair fell over my shoulders. Its length annoyed me for some reason I couldn't define. Something about the way it covered my face and smothered my neck.

Abruptly I stood up and began to walk toward the sounds of other people. There was this most delicious smell that got stronger and stronger as I got closer to the sounds.

It made me salivate and grow exited at the thought of eating it. What was it? It smelt so good...

I had just started to run, the hunger for this delicious smell making me hungrier and more desperate to have it. My body felt so powerful, so fast, I could do anything...

Then suddenly there was a flash of something in my head and I almost tripped. I stood motionless, looking around trying to determine what exactly I saw.

I was about to follow the smells again when it came again, stronger and more vivid.

A boy, no a man. Blonde, with red eyes. Sitting in some sort of restaurant looking at me and smiling. Then the same man, this time surrounded by two woman and three men, all terribly beautiful, all with amber eyes looking at me and smiling. The man turns to me and holds out his hand. His eyes when they smiled...some emotion shone in them that I couldn't quite identify. Was it joy, happiness? I didn't know, all I knew was that it made me smile and look at him in the exact same way...

Then it was gone and I was just standing in the forest alone. I knew I couldn't go toward the smell. Everything in me screamed that I must follow, must have that which made the smell, that I have to feed, that i have to...kill?

_No,_ something deep inside me said. _Walk away_, go deeper into the forest, do not bow to this hunger. Images flashed across my mind again. This time of death. Through my own eyes I saw a girl I knew was myself, pale and beautiful but with shocking red eyes grab a screaming man by the neck and bite into him, holding him effortlessly as he struggled, my mouth clamped at his throat and drinking, his blood staining my white dress, his screams and struggles weakening...

It was hard, so hard I whimpered in pain. But after what seemed like forever I turned and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. My feet making hardly a sound as they touched the forest floor and the trees whipping by faster than I knew was possible.

And I also knew that what I was, who I was, was not human. I was something more, something deadly.

_Not if you don't want to be._

The thought came unbidden into my head and images flashed again, this time of me drinking from the neck of dead deer, and I looked up and my eyes were amber, just like those people I saw I my head only a minute ago.

And I knew that I had to find those people. They were like me, and we would be part of them, the man and I. Him I had to find first. Sitting in the restaurant, smiling and saying "I sorry, maam."

Him leaning on the rail of a boat, looking out at the water. Him sitting next to me in a car as he drove. Him in the sunlight, his skin sparkling like diamonds. Him reaching for me in a dark room, his face intense, his eyes, not amber, and looking at me with such...

And I still couldn't identify the emotion.

But that didn't matter. All I needed to know, and did know was that someday, someday twenty eight years from now, he would be in that restaurant and I would find him, and together we found find the family with the amber eyes.

And we would always be that.

Together.


	2. Chapter 2 Jasper's POV

The rain was beginning to irritate me.

Whilst being a vampire meant you didn't feel cold, or much discomfort of any kind, I was getting rather sick of being wet.

Such is the life of a nomadic vampire.

Now what I really wanted was a nice dry place to sit and maybe read the newspaper. No maybe not, I wasn't really in the mood to read poorly veiled propaganda. A book then?

The library perhaps?

Though that does come with some risk of terrifying frumpy, spinster librarians with my red eyes.

Peter and Charlottes theory of co-existence with humans does have some problems that are difficult to solve.

Peter and Charlotte. I missed their company from time to time.

Being alone these months alone can get, well, lonely.

Nothing less than I deserve I'm sure.

After the things I've done. That I will do, when I get too hungry and lose control...

I think it is safe to say the devil will be meeting me personally when I do find myself at the end of this 'immortal' life.

I am a monster, in every sense of the word.

I'm every nightmare a child fears. I'm the reason why you're afraid of the dark.

/

I lifted my hands and examined them dispassionately. No one would ever think, would they, the lives snatched away by these hands. I had stopped counting how many a long time ago. Those in the war, both wars should I say, both vampire and human. The newborns no longer useful to Maria...

All dead. Everyone I fought, everyone I was told to kill. All dead.

Tell me, who believes I deserve absolution, after they hear what I did.

No one, this is who.

In my human life a priest once offered me forgiveness for my sins. "God is forgiving," he said. "As long as you repent, and ask forgiveness, your sins shall be forgiven."

Would you be so quick to tell me god forgives all now, father?

If I told you what I was, if I told of my sins. Would you offer forgiveness?

I should think not.

/

I spotted a diner in the distance. Its bright lights told me it was open and I decided to escape there for a time. People unconsciously feared us, though they didn't know why. With my abilities I could control that to a point. Though it was still never wise to linger and let suspicions take root in fearful human minds. The days of rampant superstition may be over but old fears ran deep

/

I still had no firm conclusion as to why I left Peter and Charlotte.

Maybe my envy of them. Seeing them every day, as mates, having that bond, someone to love and love you unconditionally was sometimes hard to watch.

Knowing I could never have what they have.

I had resigned myself to this fate a long time ago.

Alone is what I have always been and always will be.

I try not to dwell on this often but being faced with this bond in others everyday made it too hard to convince myself that I didn't want or need to have a mate of my own.

/

And that, I can assume with reasonable accuracy is why I left.

I ignored the feeling I've had for some time now, of incompleteness.

Of searching.

That if I could only find that which I looked for, everything inside me would be whole.

And like every other time I felt this, it was pushed away.

There was no point in searching for what you could never find.

/

Slowly I pushed open the front door of the diner. Making sure that my movements were at a speed natural to humans. I hadn't practised this in quite a while so had to guess a little in achieving the appropriate speed.

I looked around and saw that I had not drawn any undue attention to myself. Only some uninterested glances and an overweight trucker snicker to his friend, "Get a load of pretty boy."

Satisfied I no one was about to run screaming I started toward an empty table.

Then I saw her.

It was a wonder I didn't when I first came in.

A vampire, sitting at a table and smiling at me brightly.

Her black hair was unfashionably short and flicked away from her face.

She was beautiful, but all vampires were. Only she seemed somehow...more so.

Her eyes were what struck me the most. They were _Amber_. I had never seen a vampire with eyes like that before. Always they were red, never this concoction of gold and honey.

I opened myself to her emotions. Joy, and anticipation came of this tiny girl in waves. I almost smiled myself as her emotions hit me, strong as they were.

She lifted a tiny hand and in one graceful movement, more fluid than I had ever seen, she beckoned me over.

What else could I do other than go to her?

I walked toward her. Impossibly her smile widened as I sat down across from her.

"Jasper Hale," she said happily in a high little voice that sounded like the tinkling of bells. It washed over me like water, and it was all I could do to keep from sighing.

"Maam," I said politely, wondering what this little fairy wanted from me.

And that was what she was, a tiny, innocent, little fairy.

And how did she know me anyway? As far as I knew the only people who knew me in the north were Peter and Charlotte.

"I've been waiting a long time for you Jasper." She said, still smiling. "It isn't polite to keep a lady waiting."

For some reason I couldn't figure on I felt chastised.

"I'm sorry Maam."

She laughed, delighted. Her laugh every bit as innocent and pixie like as the rest of her.

It was the most wonderful thing I had ever heard.

She cocked her head and studied me, and all the while, her lips curved in a happy smile.

"You were looking for someone Jasper."

Was I? Yes I was. It seemed the little fairy had handed me the reason for this lonesome wandering to me on a plate.

"I know who you're looking for."

I smiled, "You do?"

"Yes," she said happily. "Me."

Now that took me back a little.

"I'm sorry maam I didn't catch your name."

"Just Alice."

"Just Alice?"

"Just Alice."

"Well Alice, how do you know so much about me and what I'm looking for?"

"Because I do Jasper, because I've been waiting for you, and you've been looking for me. And together we're meant to find the family Cullen and be part of them. These things I know."

With that her smile faded, and her look turned serious, but the friendliness didn't entirely leave her face.

The same hand she had beckoned me with, now lifted and unfurled itself toward me. A silent question.

In her emotions, there was now hope and a little fear.

With that outstretched hand she was asking me to go with her.

And for the first time in a hundred years, I felt Hope.


End file.
